Not a total loss for Eagles in sloppy setback

OF THE MORNING CALL

CINCINNATI — Week 2 of the preseason offered a curious, albeit brief, glimpse of how good the Eagles can be this year. It also underscored how much work they still need to do to have any kind of success against the NFL's elite.

Sloppy offensive line play and more shortcomings on special teams were on display as the Eagles succumbed 22-9 to the host Cincinnati Bengals Friday night at Paul Brown Stadium.

The Bengals were able to take advantage of four second-half turnovers to turn what had been a tight game for the better part of three quarters into a runaway.

Owens took advantage of a mismatch in single coverage by Joselio Hanson, bumping him at the line and then just running past him to make the easy catch on a fly pattern down the right sideline.

"That's what they brought me here for, right?" Owens said. "Deep threat, beat your guy, get down the field, make the catch. We've got it all in our arsenal. The coaches just have to call the plays for us and we've got to make the plays."

Hanson was in for Asante Samuel, who was held out with a hamstring strain.

Although the Eagles gave up 213 first-half yards, they held the Bengals to just that one touchdown and picked off two of Palmer's passes.

On the flip side, they were able to counter only with a pair of David Akers field goals, the second of which came after a touchdown pass from Kevin Kolb to Jason Avant was wiped off the board due to left guard Max Jean-Gilles and left tackle Jason Peters lining up off the line of scrimmage.

Right tackle Winston Justice was flagged for the same infraction earlier, and they wound up with four illegal-formation penalties before the night was through.

"You're going to have games like this," Kolb said. "Cincinnati has a lot of games like this, where it is a grind. We've seen it when the weather gets cold that you have to be able to grind the ball and get your points when you're down there.

"It's a good learning experience. It's not always going to be 45 points on the board and 500 yards. We can learn from it, we can move on, and that's why we're in the preseason."

Unlike the previous week's wild affair, this game was more typical of a preseason contest, with few scoring opportunities and a first half that produced just 13 points combined.

In fact, until the long pass to Owens, the best chance either team had at producing a score in this midfield scrum was when Cincinnati's Mike Nugent lined up to kick a 51-yard field goal early in the second quarter. But a false start penalty knocked the Bengals out of Nugent's range and brought on the punt team.

The Eagles finished the first half with just 167 total yards and seven first downs. But thanks in large part to the turnovers their defense produced, they were staring at only a one-point deficit.

The second interception, which was provided by Quintin Mikell, set up the drive in which Avant's touchdown was nullified. Mikell had plenty of help on that pick as cornerback Dimitri Patterson, linebacker Stewart Bradley and Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco converged on a pass by Palmer at the same second, keeping the ball in the air long enough for Mikell to get his hands on it before it hit the ground.

"Ideally you want to hold them to zero points," Mikell said. "But at the end of the day we just want to see us flying around, making plays on the ball, getting turnovers and getting big plays. And that's what we're about. So we're working towards it, we're getting better and better every week.

"Really, this is our first time getting more than six plays. So we saw some things we need to work on and we're just going to keep getting better every week."

What the defense can be most proud of coming out of this game is its resiliency. Though burned for big plays, the first-team group never appeared fazed.

"That's a good offense," Mikell said. "They've got some good receivers and I think we had a pretty good game. We had a couple picks and made some plays. They had one play on us but we came back. So that's what we want to see at this point in the year."

The Eagles were able to turn their halftime deficit into a 9-7 lead by the end of the third quarter, despite backup quarterback Michael Vick tossing a pair of interceptions.

That was because an interception by linebacker Keenan Clayton set up a go-ahead field goal of 48 yards by David Akers with 8 seconds remaining in the quarter.

But the Bengals responded with their second touchdown series, a 57-yard drive finished off by a Cedric Peerman 22-yard run. Peerman then ran for the two-point conversion, giving his squad a 15-9 advantage early in the fourth.

Vick was only 1-for-5 passing with the two interceptions. He finished with a passer rating of 0.0.

Mike Kafka, who played the fourth quarter, wasn't much better, also tossing two interceptions while going 4-for-12. Kolb was a respectable 11-for-17 for 126 yards.